If you’re going to an Oscar party on Sunday and want to impress your friends with your methodology for picking your winners, here’s the Hitwise method:
Chart the weekly share of searches for each nominee from the beginning of 2005 to present and export the data to CSV. Add up the weekly share for the whole year and sort by volume – now you have the most searched for Oscar nominees throughout the year. Here are this year’s picks by share of search volume:
Best Picture – Brokeback Mountain
Best Actor – Joaquin Phoenix
Best Actress – Charlize Theron
Best Supporting Actor – Jake Gyllenhaal
Best Supporting Actress – Rachel Weisz
Of course, looking at this list, you realize that online searching is more about sex appeal than acting ability. While the nominees are all fine actors, certainly more people are going to search for the hunky Joaquin Phoenix or former model Charlize Theron than Philip Seymour Hoffman or Judi Dench. I wonder if the Academy will vote the same way as internet searchers.
Check out Heather’s post on UK Oscar related searches and Bill’s post on Brokeback Mountain and movie searches.